Gamer psychology: Human enemies draw more aggression from players

People are always saying gamers tend to be aggressive when they are playing.

Others comment this aggression can leave the game and transfer into the real world.

What truth is there to any of this? One study fom the University of Connecticut sheds some light on gamer psychology as per reports from i09 on May 23, 2013.

Researcher used the game Quake with just under 150 participants, tracking their verbal, physical, and cognitive aggression as they played.

Findings indicated the more human like an enemy in the game, the aggressive the players became.

Principal investigator Rory McGloin explains:

“The more human players perceived the aggressive targets to be, the more verbally aggressive they were and the more violent words they generated.”

“Although we predicted that less human targets would result in more aggression, players seemed to be more aggressive after perceiving more human targets.”

He adds: “We can talk about violent video games and aggression all day, but we need to be careful. We’re not going to find one answer and be able to say, ‘This game’s good, this game’s bad.’ It’s never going to be that simple.

While these findings do not indicate whether gaming conclusively harmful to players, it does give insight into how a player’s mind works when they are engaged in shooter games such as Quake.

Gamer psychology is an ever popular topic as questions regarding the rise of violence in the United States and across the globe go unanswered.

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